


I Can't Decide

by John_Bender



Series: Unsquare Dance [2]
Category: Doctor Who
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-25
Updated: 2015-02-25
Packaged: 2018-03-15 05:06:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3434663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/John_Bender/pseuds/John_Bender
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>´He tries to chill the flash of excitement with a spoonful of ice cream, but it vaporises like a snowflake in the hellish vision of screaming bodies wreathing over burning soil. He swallows hard.</p><p>“Are you sure I’m a nice person?” he asks the Doctor. “The combination of cranberry sauce and fruit sherbet gives me the strangest ideas.”`</p><p>*The Doctor takes an amnesiac Master on a nice day out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Can't Decide

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Don't own it, don't make money with it
> 
> Please don't just ´like` or ´dislike` this. Reviews are VERY MUCH appreciated.

*********

The bedroom door bangs open before the Master gets a chance to even think of covering himself. Or resisting against being grabbed by the hood of his sweater and yanked up. 

“I should have known that instead of drawing a lesson from a bit of good old deterrent therapy you’d go and pervert it for your sick pleasures,” the Doctor rants.

The Master staggers to his feet, not entirely unembarrassed at finding himself caught in the act, but he’ll be damned if he lets the old nag see it. He sneers. “You certainly should have.” 

The Doctor points his sonic screwdriver. “No more pleasures for you, my friend. Collar setting changed to knocking you out cold, should you try something funny.”

“And what exactly do you mean by ´funny`?” 

Another harsh yank propels the Master into his en suite bathroom. “You’ll know when it happens. Now go and take a shower. You reek like ten rubbish dumps.” The screwdriver whirrs again and the Master’s grimy cloths disappear, leaving him buck naked. 

“You have a defabricator setting on this thing?” he asks, baffled. “I bet you haven’t once used it for-”

Planting the fingertips of his free hand on top of the Master’s head, the Doctor spins him round to face the shower. And the full-length mirror beside it.

“Whoa!” The Master leaps. “When’s that happened?”

He still wears his last body, but it’s not just his hair now that’s discoloured. His skin is a waxen white. 

No, he decides. Waxen’s too prosaic. Rather think of it as alabaster. 

Even his eyes have toned down to a pale yellow...by no stretch of the imagination can he bring himself to call this sickly shade golden.

And he’s lost weight.

“I’m not sure,” the Doctor says, “My best guess is that with all the leaking of live energy and the brush with the Time Lock and the Vortex you might have gone through another botched regeneration. Any strange sensations of pain as of late?”

The Master snorts. Yeah, courtesy of the Tardis, thank you very much. 

He leans closer to the mirror. “You think chicks dig that anorexic undead look?”

The Doctor tuts. "Not as along as you smell like a rotting corpse.” 

***

It takes a long teeth brushing, three scrub downs with antibacterial soap and five shampooings for the Master to feel halfway clean. Then he just stands, face tilted upwards, eyes closed, and lets the hot water massage the pain out of his muscles, his head. Lets it pound down on him, like millions of tiny, tiny drums. 

And there, in his first calm moment in more than one eternity, it finally hits him. His very own drums have gone. Gone to make room for the abysmal silence that falls after even self-understanding died away. 

He stares into the abyss and the abyss stares back and it gives him vertigo, pulls the rug out from under him and he falls. 

Next thing that hits is his head against the edge of the shower tray. 

***

The Tardis alerts the Doctor to the Master’s mishap. And the Doctor comes running to find him unconscious, a steady trickle of blood from a cut on his forehead mingling with the water that washes down the drain. The Doctor kneels, scoops the skinny figure up into his arms and carries him over to the med bay.

***

A scan for inner injuries comes up negative and when the Doctor cleans the cut, the yellow eyes flutter open.

“Hullo.” The Doctor plasters a band aid on. 

“What...what happened?”

“You had a tiny syncopal attack back there. Nothing serious, I’ll have you up and about in no time flat.”

The eyes dart about. “Where am I? Who are you?” 

Then they narrow, frown. “Who am I?”

***

Amnesia. Proper, full-fledged amnesia. 

Oh, the Master remembers his quantum physics all right. He can calculate the space-time distortion round a black hole and he knows each of the Teletubbies by name. 

But he knows zilch about who or what he is.

Not a big deal, though. A quick dip into his mindscape to loosen the blockade and he’s back to his old self. 

The Doctor raises a hand to make contact with the Master’s temple.

And remembers this old self. Ablaze with madness, hurting everyone in reach. On his knees, tears in his eyes, getting hurt. Raging with a strength born out of sheer desperation, hurting those who’ve hurt him. 

Why throw him back into this hell just yet? Why not give him a little break? Cause ignorance can be bliss, can’t it, and the Doctor also sees the bright young boy the Master was before Rassilon came over him. And the kind and devoted man he turned into when he made himself human. And he sees the Master saving the Doctor’s life with three simple words. 

Why not give him some time and space to reconnect with that part of himself?

So instead of going for the temple the Doctor lowers his hand and pats the Master’s cheek. “Your name is Koschei,” he says, “And you’re a really nice chap.”

***

“I’m not walking around on a leash in public,” Koschei hisses. 

It’s the first time since his accident, the Doctor notices, that he’s properly focussed on the here and now. The past couple days had gone by with him blankly staring off into space. And he wasn’t getting any better. Quite on the contrary. So the Doctor decided a change of scenery would do him good. A bit of fresh air. A stroll on one of the planets where leash-keeping of humanoids was legal.

Problem is, with the focus comes resistance. And while the Doctor appreciates Koschei’s revived spirits he does not appreciate the masterly insubordination it brings, or the resulting delay of plans. After all, it’s a sunny spring day and there’s flea markets to be visited, ice creams to be eaten and the local history museum of Canine Nine closes at five. 

So the Doctor makes short work, reaches out and hooks the leash to Koschei’s collar. “It’s for your own good. You’re adrift and disorientated and we wouldn’t want you to get lost, would we?”

Koschei snarls, bares his teeth, snaps at the Doctor and, with a POW! from the collar, keels over. When he comes round he bares his teeth and snaps and keels over. Comes round, snaps, keels over.

They don’t make it to the flea market that day. 

***

“Now, what did we learn yesterday?” The Doctor asks, hand hovering over the collar’s latch. “Biting is bad, bad, bad.”

Koschei glowers from heavy lidded eyes. “Stop talking to me like I’m an idiot. I lost my memory, not my marbles.”

You lost your marbles long before your memory, the Doctor thinks and says “We’re gonna get your memory back. Promise. In the meantime we can just as well do nice things. Lovely, fluffy things. Teach the old dog a few new tricks.”

Koschei’s upper lip curls.

“Right. Unfortunate choice of words. What I’m trying to say is, hey, good times ahead! Bit of sightseeing, the whole of time and space, and saving lives where and whenever we get the chance!” 

The leash clicks in place and Koschei presses a thumb and forefinger against the bridge of his nose. “Could you start with saving my life by shutting up? I have a hell of a headache.”

The Doctor pulls Koschei through the opening Tardis doors. “For someone who does the nasty to electroshocks that could kill an elephant you’re quite the whiner.”

Koschei’s head snaps up. “Do I?” 

There’s a wicked fascination in his tone the Doctor rather had not provoked.

***

The dominant species on Canine Nine is akin to the Cat Nuns. They’re neither nuns nor cats, of course, but physiologically similar to the latter, only with dog faces. 

Collars and leashes are fashion accessories here and as Koschei is being dragged through the labyrinth of market booths, he gets quite a few appreciative nods for the solid metal loop round his neck. He’s oblivious, though, back to his blank stare. And as much as the manic glitter in the Master’s eyes worried the Doctor, the blankness worries him even more. 

He scans the stalls for something – anything – that might be fit to draw Koschei’s attention. He scans family packs of dog biscuits and pulicide agents, handmade bowls, more collars and leashes, and then the exotic stuff like second hand Judoon uniforms, a snow globe with two miniature weeping angels, picture postcards from New New York. And telepathy pendants and psychic papers – and then he sees it.

“Oh, perfect!” He yells, whips the shimmer wristwatch out of the Mary-Poppins-esque frump's hand without even registering her face and shoves it in Koschei’s instead. “Look what I’ve found. Think of all the fun things you could shapeshift yourself into with this one. A Forest of Cheem, or a Hath, or a Silurian. Wouldn’t that be fun? That would be fun, wouldn’t it?” 

Koschei snaps out of his trance and right into peskiness. “Or I could turn you into yourself without vocal cords. That would not only be fun but also a massive relieve. Or hang on...” He frowns at a knob on the shimmer. “This thing has a subconscious setting. Maybe digging up some shape from my subconscious could trigger my memory.” He snatches the gadget from the Doctor and aims it at him.

“No!” the Doctor shouts, inwardly cursing himself for not anticipating that this could, literally, backfire. He waves his already changing hands to a couple more nos, but it’s too late. And quite en passant, he also recognises these hands.

Next thing he knows, the shimmer shatters on the cobble stone pavement. “I know you.” Koschei gasps as he takes a big step back. Then he cocks his head. “Why do I have the feeling you should be wearing a pin stripe suit?” 

“Hush,” the Doctor says, brushing his fingertips over Koschei’s temple. “Hush. Forget about it.”

***

The museum is, frankly, quite the bore with its array of antique collars and leashes. And when Koschei says “If I have to see one more collar I’m gonna hang myself on mine,” the Doctor decides it’s time for the ice cream.

***

“What do you want?” the Doctor asks over a Semifreddo menu that lists Bloody Bovine Brains and Raw Rumen alongside more touristy flavours like Kiwi Killer and Peaceful Peach.

The ice café is at the periphery of a square that bares a vague resemblance to the Cardiff Plass. Only there’s no bay. And no Rift. And no Hub underneath. And the setting sun is a red giant and the moons that chase it come in threes. But otherwise…

“The Kiwi Killer,” Koschei answers without hesitation.

“But doesn’t Peaceful Peach sound much better?”

“Nope. I want the Kiwi Killer.”

“But you have amnesia. You don’t know what you want. Trust me when I say you prefer a perfectly peaceful Peach.”

“But I don’t.”

“You do.”

“Don’t.”

“Do.”

“Don’t”

“I can come back later,” their dachshund waiter suggests.

“No.” The Doctor claps his menu shut. “We'll take two Peaceful Peaches.”

***

The Peach thing isn’t half bad, Koschei inwardly concedes. Not least because the saccharine red syrup that covers the scoops reminds him of blood covering a pale chest. 

Blood. Covering. A pale chest. 

He tries to chill the flash of excitement with a spoonful of ice cream, but it vaporises like a snowflake in the hellish vision of a body exsanquinating underneath him. He swallows hard.

“Are you sure I’m a nice person?” he asks the Doctor. “The combination of cranberry sauce and fruit sherbet gives me strange ideas.”

The flash of concern on the Doctor’s face is too fractional to be seen. What Koschei sees instead is the saccharine grin that covers it. 

"Strange Ideas? Like...what?"

Kochei leans in with an angelic smile. "Like suddenly I can't seem to decide whether you should live or die." 

It's the Doctors turn to swallow hard. "Looks like you remember your bad taste in music, too."


End file.
